In a new effort, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Baylor College of Medicine have used advanced imaging technology to fill in details about the underlying cause of canine diabetes, which until now has been little understood. For the first time, they've precisely quantified the dramatic loss of insulin-producing beta cells in dogs with the disease and compared it to the loss observed in people with type I diabetes. "The architecture of the canine pancreas has never been studied in the detail that we have done in this paper," said Rebecka Hess, professor ...

Black bears in Yosemite National Park that don't seek out human foods subsist primarily on plants and nuts, according to a study conducted by biologists at UC San Diego who also found that ants and other sources of animal protein, such as mule deer, make up only a small fraction of the bears' annual diet. Their study, published in this week's early online edition of the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, might surprise bear ecologists and conservationists who had long assumed that black bears in the Sierra Nevada rely on lots of protein from ants and other insects ...

For pregnant women who are at low risk of complications giving birth, the risk of newborn death and maternal complications is similar for obstetric deliveries by family physicians and obstetricians, according to a large study published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal). "It is common to assume that more specialized or higher-volume medical care will result in improved outcomes," writes Dr. Kris Aubrey-Bassler with the Primary Healthcare Research Unit, Discipline of Family Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John's, Newfoundland. "The obstetric ...

A new Canadian guideline aims to ensure that pain during vaccination is minimized in both children and adults. The guideline, published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal), is targeted at all health care providers who administer vaccines. "Pain from vaccinations is common and can make people hesitate about getting future vaccines even as adults," states Dr. Anna Taddio, Senior Associate Scientist at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), Toronto, Ontario, and Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Toronto. "This can put people at risk of contracting ...

Today's workforce is highly sex-segregated -- for example, most elementary school teachers are women, while most chemistry professors are men. Indiana University Bloomington researchers Bianca Manago, a doctoral student in sociology, and Cate Taylor, an assistant professor of sociology and gender studies, examine one important consequence of this occupational sex segregation: the stress exposure of women working in highly male-dominated occupations. "We find that such women are more likely to experience exposure to high levels of interpersonal, workplace stressors," Manago ...

Indiana's strict voter identification law may have prevented some elderly citizens from voting in the last two presidential elections, but there's little evidence it kept large numbers of voters from the polls, according to research by Indiana University Bloomington doctoral student Adam Nicholson. Nicholson compared turnout figures in the 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 elections in Indiana and in Nebraska and Pennsylvania, two states without voter ID laws. Unlike most previous research on voter identification laws, the study examined data at the county level, not the state ...

Atlanta, GA - August 24, 2015 - Individuals who received the flu vaccine were protected for up to 6 months post-vaccination, the duration of most flu seasons, according to a study presented at the 2015 International Conference on Emerging Infectious Diseases. Each flu season, researchers work to find out how effective the flu vaccine was in order to measure its value as a health intervention. Factors such as age and health of an individual, as well the level of similarity between the flu virus and the flu vaccine can play a role in how well an influenza vaccine works. "Few ...

New research into the impact of climate change has found that warming oceans will cause profound changes in the global distribution of marine biodiversity. In a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change an international research team modelled the impacts of a changing climate on the distribution of almost 13 thousand marine species, more than twelve times as many species as previously studied. The study found that a rapidly warming climate would cause many species to expand into new regions, which would impact on native species, while others with restricted ...

The second ice age during the Cryogenian period was not followed by the sudden and chaotic melting-back of the ice as previously thought, but ended with regular advances and retreats of the ice, according to research published by scientists from the University of Birmingham in the journal Nature Geoscience today (24 August 2015). The researchers also found that the constant advance and retreat of ice during this period was caused by the Earth wobbling on its axis. These ice ages are explained by a theory of Snowball Earth, which says that they represent the most ...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Cancer researchers dream of the day they can force tumor cells to morph back to the normal cells they once were. Now, researchers on Mayo Clinic's Florida campus have discovered a way to potentially reprogram cancer cells back to normalcy. The finding, published in Nature Cell Biology, represents "an unexpected new biology that provides the code, the software for turning off cancer," says the study's senior investigator, Panos Anastasiadis, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Cancer Biology on Mayo Clinic's Florida campus. That code was unraveled ...

Women accounted for the majority of graduate medical education (GME) trainees in seven specialties in 2012 but in no specialties were the percentages of black or Hispanic trainees comparable with the representation of these groups in the U.S. population, according to a research letter published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Diversifying the physician workforce in the United States is an ongoing goal. Curtiland Deville, M.D., of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and coauthors used publicly reported data to assess the representation of women and historically underrepresented ...

The use of statins for primary prevention in patients without vascular disease older than 79 increased between 1999 and 2012, although there is little randomized evidence to guide the use of these cholesterol-lowering medications in this patient population, according to a research letter published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Michael E. Johansen, M.D., M.S., of Ohio State University, Columbus, and Lee A. Green, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of Alberta, Canada, investigated the use of statins among this population by vascular disease because the very elderly have ...

Discontinuing antihypertensive therapy for patients 75 or older with mild cognitive deficits did not improve short-term cognitive, psychological or general daily functioning, according to an article published online by JAMA Internal Medicine. Midlife high blood pressure is a risk factor for cerebrovascular disease. However, the effect of late-life blood pressure on cognition is less clear. Some studies have suggested that late in life, it is lower, rather than higher blood pressure, that increases the risk for cognitive decline. Justine E. F. Moonen, M.D., of Leiden ...

A study matching newborn glucose concentration screening results with fourth-grade achievement test scores suggests that early transient newborn hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) was associated with lower test scores at age 10, according to an article published online by JAMA Pediatrics. At birth, the continuous utero-placental-umbilical infusion of glucose ends and reaches the lowest values during the first couple of hours. The newborn brain principally uses glucose for energy and prolonged hypoglycemia has been associated with poor long-term neurodevelopment and neurocognition. ...

TORONTO, ON - A team of physicists at the University of Toronto (U of T) have taken a step toward making the essential building block of quantum computers out of pure light. Their advance, described in a paper published this week in Nature Physics, has to do with a specific part of computer circuitry known as a "logic gate." Logic gates perform operations on input data to create new outputs. In classical computers, logic gates take the form of diodes or transistors. But quantum computer components are made from individual atoms and subatomic particles. Information processing ...

Researchers at NYU Langone Medical Center have found how even brief exposure to sudden sounds or mild trauma can form permanent, long-term brain connections, or memories, in a specific region of the brain. Moreover, the research team, working with rats, says it was able to chemically stimulate those biological pathways in the locus coeruleus -- the area of the brain best known for releasing the "fight or flight" hormone noradrenaline -- to heighten and improve the animals' hearing. The NYU team says their new study, summarized in the cover article in the journal Nature ...

This news release is available in German. An international team of scientists led by the University of Bayreuth and with participation of DESY has created the highest static pressure ever achieved in a lab: Using a special high pressure device, the researchers investigated the behaviour of the metal osmium at pressures of up to 770 Gigapascals (GPa) - more than twice the pressure in the inner core of the Earth, and about 130 Gigapascals higher than the previous world record set by members of the same team. Surprisingly, osmium does not change its crystal structure ...

BOSTON -- In response to the growing opioid crisis, several states, including Massachusetts and Rhode Island, have granted pharmacists the authority to provide naloxone rescue kits without a prescription to at-risk patients. This model of pharmacy-based naloxone (PBN) education and distribution is one of the public health strategies currently being evaluated at hundreds of pharmacies in both states to determine the impact on opioid overdose death rates. Led by researchers at Boston Medical Center (BMC), Rhode Island Hospital, and the University of Rhode Island College ...

For software programmers, security tools are analytic software that can scan or run their code to expose vulnerabilities long before the software goes to market. But these tools can have shortcomings, and programmers don't always use them. New research from National Science Foundation-funded computer science researcher Emerson Murphy-Hill and his colleagues tackles three different aspects of the issue. "Our work is focused on understanding the developers who are trying to identify security vulnerabilities in their code, and how they use (or don't use) tools that can help ...

URBANA, Ill. - Men and persons age 65 and older who have access to natural surroundings, whether it's the green space of a nearby park or a sandy beach and an ocean view, report sleeping better, according to a new University of Illinois study published in Preventive Medicine. "It's hard to overestimate the importance of high-quality sleep," said Diana Grigsby-Toussaint, a U of I professor of kinesiology and community health and a faculty member in the U of I's Division of Nutritional Sciences. "Studies show that inadequate sleep is associated with declines in mental ...

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- A new study of the records of millions of nursing home residents affirms the value of influenza vaccination among the elderly. The Brown University analysis found that between 2000 and 2009, the better matched the vaccine was for the influenza strain going around, the fewer nursing home residents died or were hospitalized. Although flu vaccination is a standard of care and a measure of quality in nursing homes, some public health experts question the evidence of whether they do any good, said Vincent Mor, corresponding author of ...

The Global Precipitation Measurement or GPM mission core satellite gathered rainfall data on Tropical Depression Kilo as it heads toward Johnston Island in the Central Pacific Ocean. On August 24, a Tropical Storm Warning was posted for Johnston Island Kilo formed as depression and strengthened into a tropical storm to southeast of the Hawaiian Islands on August 20, 2015. By 5 a.m. EDT on Sunday, August 23, Kilo weakened to a tropical depression. Today, August 24, the tropical depression nearing Johnston Island. The National Hurricane Center noted that Johnston Island ...

Washington D.C., August 24, 2015 - Children who have been abused typically experience more intense emotions than their peers who have not been abused. This is often considered a byproduct of living in volatile, dangerous environments. A recent study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP) set to find out what happens when these children are taught how to regulate their emotions. Could that better help them cope with difficult situations? The team of researchers from the University of Washington studied what happens ...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 24 2015 -- You're tired and you need an energy boost, but you don't want the jitters from caffeine. What to do? In this Reactions video, we give you some chemistry-backed tips -- one of which involves cats -- to boost your productivity and stay awake without refilling the coffee cup. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/SvEQBURrPow INFORMATION: Subscribe to our weekly series at http://bit.ly/ACSReactions and follow us on Twitter @ACSReactions. The American Chemical Society is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. With more than 158,000 ...

We humans have been using self-medication to cure the illnesses since the dawn of our species. There is some evidence that also other animals can exhibit this type of behavior, but the evidence has been hard to come by. Scientists from the University of Helsinki, Finland, have now shown that black ant Formica fusca can change their taste for food once exposed to the fungal pathogens. In the compound of interest was hydrogen peroxide, which can be found in the damaged plants, other insects and cadavers. "When ants are feeding on the diet containing extra free radicals ...